NY judge throws out charges against WW

We’ve said all along that we have the right to call the robber barons by their true name. Now a court has affirmed it.

Judge Edward H. Lehner of the Supreme Court of the State of New York has dismissed defamation charges filed by the Renco Group against Workers World Party and its weekly newspaper, Workers World.

This ruling should give encouragement to all who stand up and speak their minds about the ferocious assault on workers’ rights being carried out across this country.

Renco, a powerful conglomerate owned by multi-billionaire Ira Rennert, had hired an expensive Wall Street law firm to claim that articles published by WW last February were “malicious, false and defamatory.”

Judge Lehner ruled that, while the articles discussed “in an impassioned manner an area of public concern—that of alleged corporate underfunding of retirement obligations owed to workers, and how parts of corporate America are purportedly depriving workers of pension rights through bankruptcy proceedings,” they were “nonactionable opinion” protected by law.

Renco and WCI Steel pensions

The first article, published in the Feb. 23, 2006, issue of this paper, was entitled “WCI Steel bankruptcy robs workers’ pensions.” It described how the workers at WCI Steel, an Ohio company which at that time was wholly owned by Renco, faced the prospect of losing millions of dollars in pension money because Renco had taken the steel company into bankruptcy at a time when its pension fund was massively underfunded. According to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., by January 2006, the pension fund was underfunded by $117 million.

A release from the PBGC Public Affairs department, dated March 30, had explained that “Under the proposed plan of reorganization filed in federal bankruptcy court, the pension plan would have been left behind by the reorganizing steelmaker.”

A second article—”You be the judge: Is Renco robbing steelworker pensions?”—appeared in this paper a week later. It reported on the Renco Group’s threat to take legal action against the paper, and reaffirmed the opinions expressed in the first article.

Rennert, owner of Renco, owns a Long Island mansion valued at $185 million, with 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms and a 200-car parking garage. The mansion alone is worth more than the amount that had been lacking in the WCI Steel pension fund.

On Feb. 3, the New York Times reported that the PBGC appeared “poised to lay claim to Mr. Rennert’s 29-bedroom oceanfront estate, along with other assets, to make sure he delivers on hundreds of millions of dollars in pensions promised to a group of steelworkers in Ohio.”

After the WW articles and the filing of a suit by the PBGC to prevent WCI’s underfunded pension plan from being shifted to the federal pension insurance program, Renco finally at the end of March agreed to give up its ownership of WCI Steel and fully fund the pension plan. The PBGC then dropped its suit.

But Renco continued to press charges against Workers World for its articles on this struggle.

Workers World was able to obtain legal representation pro bono from the prominent media law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, which submitted two briefs to the court citing abundant case law upholding the right of journalists to use “rhetorical hyperbole”—like the phrase “robbing steelworker pensions”—in expressing their opinions.

Judge Lehner found that Workers World Party, “in its scathing criticism of the pension system, employed colorful rhetoric that is the hallmark of hyperbole.”

Renco has until November to file an appeal.

A delegation from Workers World Party recently walked an informational picket line in Warren, Ohio, with workers of WCI Steel. They now have a new owner but are still fighting, this time against reduced work crews and a subsequent rise of in-plant accidents. The workers wore tee-shirts that said prominently, “WCI Steals.”

Bankruptcy as a way to rip off workers

Renco’s attorneys based their argument on a very narrow definition of the article’s use of the word “rob.” They defined robbery as “forcible stealing” accompanied by the use of or imminent threat of physical force. This was the legal basis for Rennert’s charge that the article was “malicious, false and defamatory.”

The Workers World articles did not conjure up the ludicrous image of a multi-billionaire, armed with a pistol or a knife, waylaying workers in order to relieve them of their wallets. It put the loss of pensions facing the WCI Steel workers in the context of the broad anti-labor assault by big business in the recent period.

Declaring bankruptcy has become a tactic of choice by the super-rich and their executives. Bankruptcy laws allow them to rip up union contracts and shed contractual obligations they agreed to long ago. This trend threatens millions of workers with severe poverty and/or lack of adequate health care in their old age, even after a lifetime of hard and often dangerous work.

Workers in many industries are holding their breath these days. As the first WW article pointed out, “This is an episode in a bigger story about the widespread campaign of corporations like United Air Lines, Delphi Automotive Systems and Bethlehem Steel to use bankruptcy to steal workers’ pensions.” The full articles can be found at www.workers.org.

Spread the word!

This struggle is far from over. In the meantime, Workers World relies on its readers for support. We hope you can distribute the news of this court victory far and wide so anyone who “speaks truth to power” can take strength from it. And, whether or not Renco decides to appeal the decision, and even though our excellent lawyers are not charging for their time, we need funds to pay the thousands of dollars in court costs already incurred.

Billionaires like Rennert may think it’s easy to roll over a socialist newspaper that relies on small contributions and voluntary labor to publish every week. Make a contribution to the Workers World/Pension Defense Project and help prove them wrong.

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